


half moon

by theadventuresof



Category: Death Note, Death Note (Live Action TV)
Genre: Burns, M/M, Scars, Smoking, they're both alive somehow lmfao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4803359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theadventuresof/pseuds/theadventuresof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You went up in flames,” L says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	half moon

L comes back to Tokyo just over six months after Light Yagami confesses and the warehouse burns to the ground with him inside. Everything feels different the day he arrives, darker, sleepier, as he steps out into the city from baggage claim and reaches into his pocket for a fresh cigarette. There are buses coming and going and about a dozen smokers lined up outside the terminal doors, and he sidesteps half of them and leans against a post and smokes about fifteen cigarettes. He needs them after that flight.

Near has not told him anything, just that they’ve set up an appointment for him with somebody, a loose end from the Kira case. L can’t imagine why now, of all times, he is needed again to consult with somebody about Kira. About—Light. Six months it’s been, and L can feel the old wounds reopening, can feel blood running down his chin and smudging across his temple; his ribs are cracked and battered; his palms sting from the impact with the pavement. More importantly, somebody is squeezing his heart, and the feeling won’t go away.

He has the peculiar experience of visiting his own grave that evening, and reads the plainly engraved name on the white stone. L Lawliet. A strange sensation travels up his spine, and he thinks once again of Light, imagines him screaming and bloody and defeated and _glowing,_ leaving behind nothing but a twisted and charred skeleton with one hand reaching vainly for a pile of ash that had once been the deadliest murder weapon in human history.

L has not cried in six months, since the day Light Yagami made his heart stop. He kneels at the foot of his pristine headstone, curls his hands into fists in the grass and feels the tiny leaves crush against one another, and does not cry.

* * *

 

There is a maze of locked rooms under the hotel, but Near leads him down a gleaming white hallway until they reach a section of cell-like rooms. No, not cell-like. Cells. These are cells, sparse and clinical and identical, with forearm-width beds and white tiled walls. They are all empty.

Near takes him to a little foyer at the end of the hall with an assortment of comfortable furniture in it. A patterned loveseat, a striped sofa, a gorgeous art deco futon with a glass-top coffee table beside it. At the back of the room there is a pot of coffee and a stack of paper cups.

The armchair farthest from the entrance is occupied. This must be Near’s loose end. Near gestures at him, politely sees him into the room, and leaves. They have other cases to attend to.

The occupant looks up, and his (his? L thinks) face is completely in shadow, though a streak of light falls across his lap, upon which a heavy book is perched. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Light Yagami leans forward into the stripe of brightness, thoroughly shocked and very much alive.

L finds himself falling into a chair without feeling much sensation in any of his limbs. Light, alive. Light Yagami, who burned to death six months ago.

“L?” comes Light’s voice, familiar and warm and shaking with disbelief. One of his eyes is lit up; the rest of his face is shrouded in darkness. It’s him. “You’re not. You’re not dead.”

“Neither are you,” L says once he’s found his voice. “Unless we both are.”

“I held your head,” Light says. “You were dead and your heart had stopped and I screamed and screamed and held your head.”

“That I don’t remember,” L says. “A concoction that simulates the effects of death; a mild toxin that wears off in hours. For all intents and purposes, I _was_ dead.”

“You didn’t come back.”

L breathes out a long breath, imagines hot smoke pouring from his mouth. “I didn’t intend to.” It seems a shame to smoke in such a pretty, clean room, but he’s beginning to need a cigarette again. “I had to remove myself from the case. I had become too emotionally invested. You killed me, Light.”

Light curls up tightly in the chair, puts Dostoevsky on the coffee table. He’s wearing plain black gloves.

“I didn’t want any of this,” Light says. “I just wanted you.”

Neither can meet the other’s eyes as they both remember a hundred nights spent together, writhing and gasping and whispering an exchange of names. L is thankful for the dim room, for the nearly palpable darkness separating them. He sees fire again, and, paradoxically, shivers.

“L?” Light leans forward once more. 

“You went up in flames,” L says.

Light stands up from his chair and comes forward out of the dark and L gasps without meaning to because Light is melting, his skin bubbling and dripping and scaly and raw and contorted, lifeless and chalky in places and deep black and charred in others. His eye—his other eye—it’s completely white, milky and dead like a pale marble, and L shrinks back against the comfortable back of his chair and chokes on his breath and really, really does not want a cigarette.

“I did,” Light says, some sort of twisted pride in his voice. His lips are more twisted than anything. The burns extend over half of his face, dividing it almost evenly at his left cheek and nose, and L thinks of a half moon. Light has craters. His collarbone, his torso are similarly affected, and L wonders how much else of him is the same way. Light takes off his gloves and L bites back bile, a scream perched at the back of his throat, because Light’s hands are scarred and mottled and unfamiliar and talonlike. Beautiful, beautiful Light Yagami. He is unearthly, otherworldly, like some—monster—striking and dark and lovely and terrifying—

Light grimaces, and his left eye is the color of honey and his eyelashes are soft and beautiful. L can’t look away.

“Does it hurt?” L finds himself asking once he finds the will not to scream.

“No,” Light answers. “I hate it. I hate not hurting. I hate not feeling anything. I’m nothing. I’m—this isn’t hell. In hell you feel something.”

He crouches back in the dark and hides his face and puts his gloves back on and L is crying for the first time in over six months. Light has broken his heart all over again.

* * *

They get reacquainted that night and L traces the burns with his fingers and his lips and whispers beautiful things against the scars. Light may not be able to feel anything on his skin but he can feel love, still, and that certainly hasn’t gone anywhere in six months.

L peels the rest of his cigarettes apart with his fingers the next morning, disgusted with the habit. Light continues reading Dostoevsky.

They can both agree that hell is better than nothing.


End file.
